Emerson Essays Nature

The visionary man may lose himself in it, may become a receptive "transparent eyeball" through which the "Universal Being" transmits itself into his consciousness and makes him sense his oneness with God.

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A new edition (also published by Munroe, with Emerson paying the printing costs, his usual arrangement with Munroe) appeared in December of 1849. Nature has been printed in numerous collections of Emerson's writings since its first publication, among them the 1940 Modern Library The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by Brooks Atkinson), the 1965 Signet Classic Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by William H.

This second edition was printed from the plates of the collection Nature; Addresses, and Lectures, published by Munroe in September 1849. Gilman), and the 1983 Library of America Essays & Lectures (selected and annotated by Joel Porte).

Although he ranks these as low uses, and states that they are the only applications that most men have for nature, they are perfect and appropriate in their own way.

Moreover, man harnesses nature through the practical arts, thereby enhancing its usefulness through his own wit.

He defines nature (the "NOT ME") as everything separate from the inner individual — nature, art, other men, our own bodies.

In common usage, nature refers to the material world unchanged by man. Emerson explains that he will use the word "nature" in both its common and its philosophical meanings in the essay.At the beginning of Chapter I, Emerson describes true solitude as going out into nature and leaving behind all preoccupying activities as well as society.When a man gazes at the stars, he becomes aware of his own separateness from the material world.In the Introduction, Emerson laments the current tendency to accept the knowledge and traditions of the past instead of experiencing God and nature directly, in the present.He asserts that all our questions about the order of the universe — about the relationships between God, man, and nature — may be answered by our experience of life and by the world around us.The goal of science is to provide a theory of nature, but man has not yet attained a truth broad enough to comprehend all of nature's forms and phenomena.Emerson identifies nature and spirit as the components of the universe.Such satisfaction is a product of a particular harmony between man's inner processes and the outer world.The way we react to nature depends upon our state of mind in approaching it.Each individual is a manifestation of creation and as such holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe.Nature, too, is both an expression of the divine and a means of understanding it.